I'VE BEEN accused just lately of kicking the Wales players while they are down.

This morning, laying into them just seems a little bit pointless because we have been down that road so many times.

What is there to say? We were beaten by a poor and terribly limited Scotland side and throughout the match we looked confused and lacking in direction as a collective unit.

I have to say that I found the start Wales made to the match totally unacceptable. You would have thought that, for what was billed as a wooden spoon decider, the boys would have come out firing with drive and passion.

Instead, Scotland broke through tackles, murdered us at forward and took the chance that was presented to them to win the game in the first 20 minutes.

So where now for this team? Back to the Vale of Glamorgan Hotel to stare at each other over breakfast for days on end?

Steve Hansen has more problems to address than I can think of. The first must be to pull the dressing room back together. People like myself can only go by the evidence out on the pitch.

That evidence tells us that the camp is all over the place. The players look confused.

Time and again I am baffled by a raft of second-half substitutions that only serve to sow seeds of doubt in minds. They disrupt and disjoint any pattern there is. They frustrate players who must be desperate to stay on the field to turn around a match. Most of the time it appears they are changes for change's sake.

A sad resignation comes roaring to the surface when you watch this team play.

But I sincerely hope Mr Hansen does not resort to blaming the media as he has done the past week.

I read somewhere that he thinks the press are supposed to have destroyed Colin Charvis.

They are juvenile remarks from a grown man and are so out of touch with reality.

The coaching team and the players are the ones responsible for preparation and if they don't know the meaning of that, then when on earth are they going to learn?

To throw blind statements about like that beggars belief. When David Beck-ham has a bad game for England or Manchester United, is it the media's fault?

Look at Becks' level of performance when he came back from the 1998 World Cup having been sent off against Argentina and it seemed the whole country wanted his blood.

I think a remark like Hansen's compounds the problems in the Welsh camp. And the players are intelligent enough to see through them.

As I mentioned at the start of this piece, I have been accused of knocking the team of late.

Am I expected then to be a hypocrite? What are we supposed to do, pretend Italy and Scotland never happened, that it is all a bad dream? I'll tell you what, it does feel like a bad dream at the moment.

Gareth Edwards, Jonathan Davies, Phil Bennett, none of us wants to be negative. But we are asked for our opinions and we owe it to our readers, listeners, watchers or whoever, to tell it as we see it.

We would be as guilty as anybody if we started coming up with all manner of ridiculous reasons as to why we are in such a state at the moment.

I hear, also from the Welsh management, that we have a team who, in a couple of years' time, are going to be capable of winning the championship.

Again, a statement that beggars belief and one that must leave many of the players wondering what world some people are living in.

If people want to believe that we suddenly have all these great players then fine. I cannot agree. And again, I am going only on the evidence of what I watch, week in, week out.

If you watched the Ireland-France game beforehand yesterday then ask yourself about the intensity of the tackling, the physical nature of the action and the all round organisation.

To be honest, I have sympathy with the Welsh players at the moment.

I don't see any evidence that they have a bigger picture, a script, to aim for in matches.

When you are struggling you need a basic game plan and you have to stick with it.

I have no confidence in the Welsh camp in that regard.

And don't bring up the off-field politics. That should not enter into players' minds when they are standing on a Murrayfield pitch for a vital Six Nations game with 20,000 Welsh supporters having travelled up to watch them.